Mark Nottingham wrote:
> No; I think we're saying the same thing; that HTTP servers can't*
> violate the linear nature of time, in that if they choose to send the
> response before getting the full request, there are still things they
> don't know about that request.
No :-) that's not what I'm suggesting.
Consider a server which takes a POST request and returns an exact copy
of the body with all the characters changed to upper case, at the same
time as it receives the request.
That doesn't violate time and it can be streamed. (I have tested it
with some clients, and it works... with some.) But it does send the
*status* before receiving the whole request.
Consider also a POST request uploading a large video file. The
response could be streaming HTML indicating the progress.
Consider also Comet-style apps which could use one connection instead of two.
Now, we can't do any of those things because it doesn't work with most
clients.
But the spec does not appear to support those clients not working.
-- Jamie